Category: Pet stuff

Pet related posts

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Fun at the dog show

Had a good morning with the dogs at the Charleston Dog Show and the Farmer’s Market.

Had Simba entered in the Sporting Group but didn’t quite make the cut. He did make me proud by being good enough to pass the CGC test though!

There was a pretty good turnout for the dog show this year with all kinds of different dogs. The dogs had a good time checking things out and despite my best efforts, nabbing bits of popcorn off the ground.

The sporting group was the second group to go, so after we were finished with that, we hit the farmer’s market for a little bit of breakfast and to ogle the strawberries

Breakfast crepe
Baskets of strawberries

I couldn’t make it out of the market without grabbing a couple baskets of these yummy berries.

A bucket of ice water was set out so the dogs could get a cool drink as the day got warmer, so Nala couldn’t resist bobbing for ice cubes

Nala and Simba bobbing for ice cubes

And then the morning was wrapped up with a romp at the dog park

Simba waiting for someone to throw the ball
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Off leash training

The lack of substantial blogging has been caused by several wiki projects I’m doing for work. With the new server comes a new version of MySQL which makes running Mediawiki possible. Now the documentation projects that have been sitting on the back burner are getting wiki-fied, and the people wanting them are pretty excited about it. Naturally all the people who want to wikify their documents all want to do it at the same time. This should go a long way towards getting things like procedure manuals and instructions more widely available and more easily updated though.

Today was Nala’s first day in the new off-leash obedience class with Purely Positive at Susan’s new space in the West Ashley Dolittles. Nala did pretty well listening to me while being off leash. It’s not her first training session off leash, so I expected her to do pretty well. A bag full of treats helped a lot too. The first day was mostly sit/down stays from a distance, heeling and recalls, so nothing too hard yet. It’s a small class with only 4 dogs which made things much less chaotic.

This weekend is the Charleston Dog Show at Marion Square. It’s always a good time with an abundance of dogs (and people too). The main event is the dog show that’s open to all comers. There’s even a Heinz 57 class for the mixed breed dogs. I’ve entered Nala in the Sporting class in previous years. This time I think I’ll try Simba out with the judges. I think I’ll also see if Simba can pass the CGC test. He should be fine with all the tests except for the one where I leave for a few minutes. Not sure how he’ll do with that one, but I’ve been working on it.

Come on out and bring your pet(s). It’ll be a fun time! Just remember to bring some bags so you can pick up after your dog.

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The Dog Food Project

Came across The Dog Food Project via a comment left on a past entry where I was talking about the food issues I was having with Nala a while back.
After going through a bunch of pages, I’m impressed with the quality of information on the site. With all the dog food recalls in the news lately, there are a lot of people struggling with what to feed their dogs, lots of rabid BARF/RAW advocates pushing raw feeding as the only real food choice and generally a lot of confusion.
There are several pages that talk about and define the various ingredients you’ll find listed in dog foods, what ingredients to look for and what to avoid and common dog food misconceptions.
There’s a lot of good information on the site, without pushing any particular feeding method. It should be a good read for any pet owners out there who want to know what they’re feeding their pets.
The Dog Food Project

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Spring Flinging with the Labs

Yesterday turned out to be a great day for CSCLRC’s Spring Fling match. Not too hot, nice breeze to keep most of the bugs away and plenty of dogs.

The event was open to all dogs, not just labs, so we had a few show up, like this Portuguese water dog (one of two)

a few Great Danes

and even a pair of Staffies

There was even an Australian Shepherd and a Saluki out to join in the fun.

Naturally there were Labs, and where there are Labs, there are Lab puppies!

The biggest part of the match was conformation, but since it was a B match, it’s less about showing off the best dog and more about getting dogs used to the ring and having fun.

Actually, it’s all about having fun, so there was also a costume contest to wrap things up (along with other fun events like fastest biscuit eating, dress up and ball and spoon races)

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Weekend happenings

Lots of stuff going on this weekend to keep me and the dogs busy.

Most of Saturday will be taken up with CSCLRC‘s Spring Fling Match out on Wadmalaw Island. Should be a fun time with lots of dogs to play with. Following that is the club’s board meeting and planning for the next event. It’s going to be a long but fun day I think.

Sunday is the next blogger gathering over at Ten-Seventeen out in West Ashley in the Quadrangle shopping center (next door to the Piggly Wiggly over by Citadel Mall). They make a great goulash there. Looking forward to seeing fellow bloggers again. Should be a good time.

Then there’s the ever present talk I have to finish up for the SIIM 2007 annual meeting and the accompanying paper that needs to be submitted to JDI. There’s not too much left to do for the talk so I should be able to wrap that up well before the meeting. Don’t want to be one of those people that are finishing up their talk in the speaker ready-room just before they give their presentation.